Kieran wrote:

When the system posts... the video card bios shows that my card is a
GeForce4 NV28, with 128MB of RAM. Thing is, my video card is a GF4
Ti4200, with 64MB of RAM. But the system boots up okay anyway (sort
of).

NV28 is the id for the 8x AGP range of the GF4 Ti chipsets, so if your card
is fairly new it's very likely to be an NV28 Ti4200-8X. If your card BIOS is
showing the id then it's possible there's a problem with it, which could
also explain it reporting 128MB instead of 64MB. Then again maybe it really
is a 128MB card. Check the manufacturer web site for the model number.

Windows XP comes up, and all seems fine. Except that when I try to
access the internet (dsl connection is golden) there's no activity on
the dsl modem for about 2 minutes... IE just sits there trying to load
msn.com... THEN the hdd spins around a bunch, and viola! I have net
data traffic again.

Similarly, if I try to access my system properties (either by
right-clicking on my computer or by double clicking on 'system' in
control panel) NOTHING happens... no windows pop up or anything, for
about 2 minutes... THEN the hdd spins a bunch and the windows I asked
for 2 mins ago pop up, and all is normal.

From then on the net and everything seems normal. But WTF? This
happens ever time I boot.

Similar thing used to happen on my PC. Open up Internet Explorer, choose the
Tools - Internet Options menu, go to the Advanced tab, scroll down until
you find the "Enable third party browser extensions (requires restart)"
option and uncheck it. Close IE, open it. If the pausing stops, then it's
that's cured it (so far I have never needed to re-enable that option,
despite using plugins, custom toolbars, and other apps that integrate into
IE). I can only guess that something IE was loading up either took a long
time on the first request or was searching for something on my PC. Spyware
probes and AV checks never turned up anything though.

Oh, and if I do properties on my video card, it does show up in XP as
a gf4 Ti4200... but still with 128MB of RAM, not the 64 it really has.

XP will just show what the graphics card BIOS tells it.

Dan